Motor Vehicles Amendment Bill, 2017

Why in news?

The Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Bill passed by the Lok Sabha will take a little more time to come into force, since it has not cleared the Rajya Sabha in the 2017 Budget session.

What are the significant proposals to the Motor Vehicles (MV) Act of 1988?

• A group of State Transport Ministers went into the reform question last year, while the comprehensive recommendations of the Sundar Committee on road safety have been left on the back burner for nearly a decade.
• The Centre assumes a direct role in the reforms, since it will introduce guidelines that bind State governments in several areas, notably in creating a framework for taxicab aggregators, financing insurance to treat the injured and to compensate families of the dead in hit-and-run cases, prescribing standards for electronically monitoring highways and urban roads for enforcement and modernising driver licensing.
• Protection from harassment for good samaritans who help accident victims is something the amended law provides, and this needs to be in place.

What the researches indicate?

• Research shows that imposing stricter penalties tends to reduce the level of enforcement of road rules.
• As the IIT Delhi’s Road Safety in India report of 2015 points out, the deterrent effect of law depends on the severity and swiftness of penalties, but also the perception that the possibility of being caught for violations is high.
• The amendments to the MV Act set enhanced penalties for several offences, notably drunken driving, speeding, jumping red lights and so on, but periodic and ineffective enforcement, which is the norm, makes it less likely that these will be uniformly applied.

What is the way ahead?

• Without an accountable and professional police force, the ghastly record of traffic fatalities, which stood at 1,46,133 in 2015, is unlikely to change.
• On another front, State governments must prepare for an early roll-out of administrative reforms prescribed in the amended law, such as issuing learner’s licences online, recording address changes through an online application, and electronic service delivery with set deadlines.
• Indeed, to eliminate corruption, all applications should be accepted by transport departments online, rather than merely computerising them.

Source: The Hindu